In current printer applications, with the growing popularity of internet printing, more and more files are transmitted to printers through networks to be printed out. Meanwhile, it is also required that the printers can be monitored and managed by the printing monitoring servers (e.g., managed print services, MPS) in the networks. Through the internet monitoring of printing monitoring servers, the usage status of a printer can be obtained in real-time. For example, status information, such as the number of printed pages, the remaining amount of toner or ink, supply information of the paper for printing, occurred error messages, etc., needs to be timely monitored for the printer to be maintained in time.
Especially, for companies and government agencies that have a high demand of printing, they all expect having proper management of the printers that are for internal use. Particularly, they expect timely supply and managing of orders of printing consumables such as paper for printing, toner, ink, and etc. Printing monitoring servers can perform unified management for all printers connected to the internal network of a company through network monitoring protocols (e.g., simple network management protocol, SNMP).
However, some printers that are not directly connected to a network (i.e., non-networked printers) only support interfaces such as universal serial bus (USB), serial interfaces (e.g., RS323 and RS 485), or parallel interfaces, and are connected to computers through these interfaces. The printers do not support network monitoring protocols. In addition, in some special occasions (e.g., enterprise sectors with relatively high security requirements and state authorities), or under the condition to control the cost of printers, printing monitoring servers are not able to manage these printers that are not connected to networks.
Meanwhile, the above-mentioned printers that are not directly connected to networks have advantages such as simple structures, simple functions, and being easy to use, and are thus used by a great number of users currently. Especially for those users who are not familiar with printers, they are more likely to choose printers with simple operations and are easy to use when selecting printers. Thus, the managing and monitoring of these printers that are not connected to networks is necessary.
In view of the above problems, US Patent Publication No. US20050097198 provides a solution in which the network function on a host computer, being locally connected to a non-networked printer, is used as a transit bridge to transmit the information to be monitored, of the non-networked printer, to the monitoring device in the network through non-networked communication means such as USB. This solution solves some issues regarding monitoring non-networked printing devices.
However, according to the present disclosure, many non-networked printing devices are mobile, that is, many non-networked printing devices can be moved from one host computer to another host computer and connected to that host computer. Existing printing monitoring servers do not have suitable mechanism to monitor such changes, causing the printing monitoring servers to possibly send monitoring commands to a wrong host computer, or even causing the printing monitoring servers to lose accurate monitoring of the non-networked printers that have been moved and changed connection to the host computer.
The disclosed methods and systems are directed to solve one or more problems set forth above and other problems in the art.